Something About Cats
by Hellsnextboss
Summary: "Don't die in my bedroom with no pants on." Something that's going to end up being AU Shokudaikiri x Ookurikara. Probably.


It's either that Ookurikara hasn't noticed him enter, or that he really doesn't care. As it is, Mitsutada stands in stunned silence and listens to the heartwarming tale of how someone rescued a blind cat, and now takes the cat out for adventures. He even has a leash for the cat. Bless. The video ends, and then there is silence.

Some of the other inhabitants of the house worry he might be a member of a gang. It's probably the tattoo, the way he always seems to have scratches and bruises on him, or maybe his antisocial attitude in general. That or his resting bitchface, as Tsurumaru likes to suggest helpfully. If he is a member of some violent gang, the image of Ookurikara lying on the floor in nothing but his underpants with a laptop in front of him, a cat mewling on the screen, changes his view of thugs forever.

His gaze slowly drifts from the laptop screen to the body of the man lying in front of it, unmoving. He's been worried for a while now, that there might be something wrong with Ookurikara. He's antisocial at the best of times, and has a tendency to lock himself away with his laptop frequently. Mitsutada has come back at all hours of the morning and still seen the faint glow from his laptop screen illuminating his room under the crack of his door. He worries. He's not sure if lying around in your underwear watching cat videos has something to do with depression, but watching him now, he starts to suspect.

"Are you okay?"

"We're not friends, don't talk to me."

There's something uncharacteristic in his voice, usually so steady. As the laptop screen goes black from being left idle for too long, he tries to catch Ookurikara's reflection in it, and frowns. It's just too early in the morning for this shit.

"Are... are you _crying_?"

"Get out of my house."

"What? I _live_ here."

"Fight me."

"This isn't even _your_ room!"

" _Fight_ me."

"And why aren't you wearing _pants_?"

"I'll choose where and how I die, okay?"

"Don't die in my bedroom with no pants on."

"Don't tell me how to live my life."

"The fact that I'm not here doesn't mean you can just come into my room sloppily dressed," he continues, Ookurikara groaning in annoyance. "Or, you know, not dressed at _all_. People are going to get weird ideas."

"I don't really care."

Obviously, he doesn't, as he moves his hand to the touchpad of his laptop to get the screen back in order, and clicks on a related video. Mitsutada remains stood in the doorway, frown deepening as he watches through another uplifting story of a cat being adopted and living happily ever after. Ookurikara seems to sink further into the carpet. When the video ends, he fails to respond again, for long enough that the screen darkens. Again.

"Are you still crying?"

"Leave."

"...do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

As his hand moves to the laptop again to click on yet another cat related story, Mitsutada decides he can't bear to waste another minute and a half of his life to this breakdown. Ookurikara's movements are sluggish enough that he manages to cross the room and reach down to hook his hands under his armpits before he can start the next one. As he tries to pull him up, and most importantly _away_ from the laptop, the man is a deadweight in his arms. He's also groaning.

"Look, you can watch more cat videos when you put some pants on."

A tear stained face looks up at him. It shouldn't be possible for someone to look so angry while in his underpants, having just been crying about cats, but here they were. He looks even angrier when Mitsutada tries to hold him up with one arm and wipe his face with the sleeve of the other.

" _Stop_."

"Is your hair wet?" Mitsutada asks, noticing that it looks damp. "Did... did you come here straight from the shower?" He receives no denial or confirmation, only the same death glare as before. "Why didn't you just go back to your _own_ room?"

"...that idiot is in there again."

Again. Ah. Tsurumaru. That sounded about right. He could have asked how Ookurikara knew this, or why his room had been his next thought rather than confronting the intruder and getting on with it, but neither seemed like questions he'd get satisfactory answers from. Were those even _his_ underpants? That one he just didn't _want_ to know the answer to.

"So you just decided to come to my room instead?"

"...something like that."

"So... basically... you don't have a change of clothes?"

Ookurikara gives no indication either way, though there doesn't seem to be evidence to the contrary. Feeling mentally exhausted, he lowers him back onto the carpet and watches him sink back into the same position he had been in before. Grabbing a nearby shirt from his bed, he throws it at the other, who doesn't stir. He stares at the half naked man in disbelief as he reaches out from beneath the shirt to reawaken his laptop screen, and click another cat video.

This time, it's a funny cat video. The internet has thousands of them. He sits in stunned silence as the other watches a compilation, and wonders if he's imagining the smile on his face, just because he's never seen the other manage to crack one before. After the video ends, he dares to speak up again.

"Can you at least put the shirt _on_?"

"Give me one good reason to."

"I don't know, something to do with cats?"

Unexpectedly, Ookurikara pauses and seems to consider this reply. He remains silent, unmoving for long enough that Mitsutada starts to wonder if he's being ignored, or if the other has dozed off or _actually_ died in his bedroom with no pants on.

"I'm listening."

"What?" The response throws him, and he fumbles for a follow up. "Well you won't find out if you don't put the shirt on."

Ookurikara groans, but pulls himself up into a sitting position, the shirt slipping away from him. He picks it up and shrugs it on, Mitsutada watching in disbelief as he then starts to button it up. Badly.

"You've done it up wrong."

"It's _on_ , isn't it?" He snaps, staring him down. "Well?"

"Well what?" The other holds his gaze, eyes narrowing even further, even though really, he wouldn't have thought it possible. "I didn't say it would be _instant_."

Ookurikara groans before lying back down on the floor. As he reaches out to click on yet _another_ related video, Mitsutada gives up and lies back on his bed, stuck listening to feline antics until the other gets bored and eventually wanders off. Or worms off. Really, he can't tell. It sounds like a struggle either way.

He's made a grave mistake. He realises this when he notices that Ookurikara watches him expectantly every time he enters any room he happens to be in, the cat promise the likely cause. He's not even sure if they're allowed to keep pets, and doesn't want to fish out the tenancy agreement to find out. So now he's made a promise he probably can't keep, which he suspects Ookurikara will remember and hold a grudge about for the rest of his life, the thought of which worries him sick for reasons he can't fathom, that probably aren't entirely to do with his belief that it isn't cool to be perceived as unreliable or untrustworthy.

Right; thinking. He didn't promise to get him a cat, just 'something to do with cats'. In theory, that could be _anything_. Heartened by this revelation, he decides his mission for the next day is to find that anything.

When he returns, Ookurikara is in the kitchen, and raises his head look at him expectantly. Mitsutada holds his gaze as he closes the door, and still while he steps forward into the kitchen. He stops a few feet before the other and pulls the rolled up poster out of his bag, extending it towards the other. The few seconds to follow are the most terrifying experience he has had to date. Ookurikara breaks his hold on his gaze to look at the object being offered. Then, he doesn't move, and Mitsutada has an internal breakdown as it turns out that handing a poster over to this man is the most stressful thing that he has ever had to do. What if it's not good enough? What if he genuinely _did_ expect an _actual_ cat? He can feel the lifelong grudge starting and already he feels a stress headache coming on.

...then Ookurikara looks up at him and takes the poster wordlessly, before rising from his chair and exiting the kitchen. Standing in stunned silence, he hears his footsteps fade away after the click of a door closing behind him. And then nothing.

 _Nothing_.

Rather than standing in silence and risk losing his sanity any further, he decides a shower is in order. Maybe the steam will clear his head. Or at least his rapidly growing headache.

It doesn't.

By the time he's gotten out of the shower, he can't stand it any longer. He dresses hurriedly, not putting nearly enough time into making sure he looks presentable and storms out towards Ookurikara's room. His hand rises to knock on the door before he loses confidence. While the other seemed perfectly comfortable in barging into _his_ room without reason, he needed an excuse. Badly dressed and hair still dripping wet, he storms back down the hallway and bursts into the kitchen. The result is the sound of a mug smashing on the tiled floor, Tsurumaru looking at him in surprise and Hasebe screaming at the sudden sound. The latter is the first to respond with words to his sudden appearance;

" _Why can't you people enter a room norm-"_

"Snacks," Mitsutada says, in way of explanation. "It's urgent."

"Urgent snacks?" Tsurumaru repeats, face lighting up. "What's the occasion?"

" _What do you mean 'urgent snacks'? That doesn't even_ -"

"Mi-tsu-bou!" Tsurumaru enunciates each syllable carefully and musically. "Did you have a fight with someone again?"

Mitsutada stops after just having slammed a plastic bowl down on the counter. He's not sure he has adequate words in his vocabulary to explain that he's this wound up over a poster of a cat sleeping in a hammock, or why he desperately needs to confront Ookurikara about it for the sake of his sanity. He doesn't pay as much attention as he should to what he's throwing into the bowl.

"Can't explain, not now."

"Oho! _That_ urgent?"

"Yes."

Hasebe looks torn between confusion and being angry about the coffee mess slowly spreading across the floor, that no one is doing anything about. Tsurumaru is on the edge of his seat, excited over the prospect of something, _anything_ happening, and Mitsutada angrily mixes at least six different flavours of potato chips together in a bowl. He grabs the bowl with such force he risks losing half of the contents before he turns and storms back out of the kitchen, leaving a mess of empty packets behind him. He doesn't need to turn to know that both have followed him to at least the kitchen doorway, watching him as he advances down the hall, one confused, one grinning from ear to ear.

He forgets to knock. Bursting into Ookurikara's room with as much delicacy as he had the kitchen, he finds the inhabitant lounging across his bed with his laptop, blinking at him in surprise.

It is, without a doubt, the _worst_ gift he has ever given someone in his entire life. And yet, seeing it stuck to the wall of the recipient fills him with the most overwhelming sense of relief he's ever felt. Ookurikara follows his gaze questioning before looking momentarily uncomfortable. His gaze returns to him narrowed.

"...um?"

"You like it?"

"You can't have it back."

"That's not what I-" he gives up almost as quickly as he starts, sighing with relief and easing into a smile. "Snacks?"

He eyes the bowl with no attempts to mask his suspicion, as if there might be some dark secret hidden in the midst of the potato chips, and suddenly a whole new crisis forms in his mind over the fact that the second worst thing he has ever offered someone happens to be a plastic bowl full of potato chips of unknown flavouring. Despite his fretting, after a moment of deliberation, they pass some kind of visual security check and he takes the bowl from Mitsutada's hand, placing it down on the bed beside him. And then, he says... absolutely nothing. Again. Not willing to take another shower, Mitsutada takes it upon himself to fix the silence.

"What are you watching?"

He doesn't expect Ookurikara to answer, and he doesn't. Instead, he moves a hand to tap at his space bar, resuming the video he had been watching prior to Mitsutada's appearance.

There's a frog. A really, really big frog. Maybe it's a toad. And it's eating a snake, that's trying to attack a cat, despite the fact it's definitely being eaten by the frog-toad. The cat is just _sitting_ there, just out of reach of the snake, and there's a kid beside the cat, just watching, and _what the hell was he actually looking at here?_ He stares in dumbfounded silence as Ookurikara does the same with an unreadable expression, the crunching of potato chips being louder than the audio of the video. It's a kind of morbid curiosity that keeps his attention on the screen.

And then there was silence as his brain struggled to process what the hell he had just seen, and Ookurikara finished chewing. The quiet is broken only by a low utterance from the other, a soft 'what the fuck' under his breath, before he goes ahead and clicks another related link that Mitsutada immediately regrets allowing him to choose. Ten seconds in he decides he misses the uplifting cat stories.

Somewhere between the third and seventh video that upsets his views that nature is beautiful and not terrifying, he has sunk to the floor and is leaning over the edge of the bed, watching the screen with horrified fascination. Ookurikara's expression gives nothing away between snacking, and the only indication he has that the other does, in fact, find these videos as messed up as he himself does are the small utterances under his breath from time to time. This doesn't stop him from continuing on this downward spiral into madness. Acknowledging the madness doesn't tear Mitsutada's eyes away from the screen or help him find the motivation to leave. Instead, after watching a pelican eat a pigeon in front of a bunch of school children, he points to the screen at a related link and says;

"That _can't_ be what the title suggests, can it?"

Ookurikara looks to it, and wordlessly clicks the link. What transpires stops his hand transporting another chip to his lips, mid-flight. His eyes narrow, while Mitsutada's widen.

"... so... yeah."

"... No."

"Yup."

"No!"

"Mhm."

" _No_!"

Though they don't say so in as many words, or any words at all, both vow to never speak of the video again, and probably won't be able to ever look at a cake the same way again. They don't wait for the video to finish before promptly moving back to safe realm of cat videos.


End file.
